The Tempest Research Paper

When someone asks what a utopia is, what pops into people’s minds? Many believe that Utopia is an ideal society. However, the dictionary phrases utopia as “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” (Webster) Notice that it does not say that utopia is an ideal society; it may be perfect, but not necessarily ideal. Perfect means that something or someplace that has all the elements that everyone thinks it should have. An ideal is what a person believes as the best. One person liking a place does not make it perfect, in order for it to be perfect, everyone needs to like it. This is why it is nearly impossible to have a utopian society. Yet people still dream about them, why? The reason is that although a utopian society

Even Shakespeare speaks of a utopian society in The Tempest, when Gonzalo says, “Would I admit; no name of magistrate; letter should not be known; riches, poverty, and use of service; none; contract; succession; bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none… no occupation; all men idle, all, and woman too, but innocent and pure; no sovereignty.” (The Tempest, pg. 24, lines 14-21) To Gonzalo, a utopian society has the absence of status, property, and profession which assumes unity and uniformity of humans. Although it seems perfect, it is impossible to get people to follow along. Many utopian experiments start off with enthusiasm, but end up with little followers. An example of this would be the Fruitland. It is where Louis May Alcott wrote her short story, “Transcendental Oats”, it depicted an image of how they lived there and how the experiment failed. Her father, Brandon Alcott and another man were the ones who started the experiment. However, they kept adding rules once people joined the community, thus caused many people to leave. Later on, due to crop failure and internal disorder, the community dissolved. People who joined the community were disillusioned by how different they thought the community would be. This often happened with many utopian